Minutes of Software Tools Meeting ================================= September 15, 1995 Present: H. Prosper, Q. Li-Demarteau, J. Hobbs(scribe), D. Baden, S. Protopopescu, A. Para, L.Paterno The meeting consisted of discussion regarding the proposals for text editing and for document/news handling of Hobbs and Jonckheere respectively. The propsals had been distributed electronically before the meeting and are not described in detail here. Text Processing =============== The recommendation to support Emacs as the standard D0 editor was accepted with little discussion. It was pointed out that any editor which produced output complying with D0 standards for headers and embedded documentation could be used, but collaborators should not expect D0 to support the editor. Document/News Handling ====================== A longer discussion regarding the document/news management proposal followed. First, the 3 goals in the 'Principles/Goals' section were dissected. This was followed by discussion of the 3 points of the 'Requirements' section which then lead to a general discussion regarding technical issues. The first goal was accepted with the change from "allow" substituted for "support" in the sentence "D0 should SUPPORT as many document formats as possible". The discussion then turned to the goal regarding single source. All present agreed that every document must have complete source in a standard location in order to provide ease of maintainance. Jonckheere proposed that if the initial format is not HTML, then it would be converted to HTML and the resulting HTML document would be the single source. Prosper and Para pointed out that HTML can be difficult to keep as the maintainance document and suggested that a code versioning system should be used to keep the document in its original format. The conversion to HTML and addition of links should happen automatically when the document is (re)entered into the code versioning system. The web would be used to view/access the document but not necessarily as the sole archival store. This paragraph is to be reworded by Prosper/Li-Demarteau in the final draft. The changes to the single-source description prompted discussion regarding the insertion of hyper links and the defintion of an HTML document. This corresponds to Jonckheere's second goal. It was generally agreed that authors would have the responsibility of specifying references to other documents as a generic HTML-like link. Tools must then exist to convert these links to the detailed HTML required for the display on the web or whatever system superceded the web/HTML. The tools would be run automatically as part of the conversion occuring when the document enters the D0 document management system. Some such tools exist, but much of the control software would need to be written. This ended discussion of the 'goals'. The group then began consideration of the 'requirements' section. The first two points -- those regarding display via web browsers and printing via postscript -- were accepted as is. The third point was felt to be acceptable after extention to include additional specifics regarding search features/restrictions. The last portion of Jonckheere's document describes technical issues which need to be addressed. In particular he asks (1) whether some groups are to be moderated, (2) what level of security is needed and (3) is it desirable to have different categories of information? It was agreed that moderation is probably best addressed by categorizing information. The consensus regarding security was that detailed security recommendations went beyond the scope of the commitee, but that in general less is more. Prosper stressed that naive security is worse than no security. Para pointed out that it is important to insure that the system included the security features even if these were initially disabled. The discussion then moved to other technical issues. A number of areas were mentioned without attempts to answer them. It was stressed that link stability is important. If a document is moved or modified, all links contained in or pointing to that document should be automatically updated. This is currently a by-hand process in the D0 web environment. Protopopescu expressed the need for a single front-end with which all documents and news would be entered into the system. There was no dissent. The last techinal issue regarded notification and expiration of news. Hobbs pointed out that the standard mechanism for news on Unix platforms was the usenet system and the format defined in RFC 977. At least of commitee member (Genser) has used a web browser to view the news in the Fermilab news server. [ ASIDE: At the request of the convenors, more description of usenet news is included here. Usenet news is a specification for distributing and viewing news in a networked environment. It is the standard system and tens of thousands of news groups are publically accessible world-wide. Many groups have in excess of a thousand of messages posted per month. Clearly, the reliability and robustness are well tested. Usenet news is distributed via a predefined set of one or more server (or relay) nodes. These nodes simply respond to requests for a message or messages in a given group or groups. A single server need not have local copies of all groups. In this case, the server is told in its initial set up how to find the information. D0 would presumably have a single server from which D0 specific news would be accessed. Users read the news via 'news readers.' Many such readers exist for both text-based terminals and GUI environments. Most are available as freeware. The list of features varies, but all support reading, posting, notification and reading only unread news. A set of common text-based readers includes programs called rn, vnews, cnews and emacs. A common GUI-based reader for X windows is xrn. Fermilab supports at least the rn, xrn and emacs readers. Usenet format news can also be accessed via standard web browsers. Operationally, most users define a set of 'subscribed' groups when they first use the system. After this time they are notified only of (a) new groups and (b) news in the subscribed groups. On unix systems, the list of subscribed groups and read messages are stored in a text file in the users home (login) directory. ] It was suggested that a 'web group' be created to address unanswered questions raised here and to oversee the system implementation. This group should not be viewed as a commitee, but rather as the designers/implementers of the final product. The meeting concluded with Harrison and Qizhong reminding the members that they would merge the two proposals into one. The result would be distributed prior to the next meeting. It is planned that this meeting would act as a 'sign-off' on the combined proposal prior to release to the collaboration.